Mechanical Choices

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael S. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Legal Punishment ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Moral Blame ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Common Sense Psychology

This book assays how the remarkable discoveries of contemporary neuroscience impact our conception of ourselves and our responsibility for our choices and our actions. Dramatic (and indeed revolutionary) changes in how we think of ourselves as agents and as persons are commonly taken to be the implications of those discoveries of neuroscience. Indeed, the very notions of responsibility and of deserved punishment are thought to be threatened by these discoveries. Such threats are collected into four groupings: (1) the threat from determinism, that neurosciences shows us that all of our choices and actions are caused by events in the brain that precede choice; (2) the threat from epiphenomenalism, that our choices are shown by experiment not to cause the actions that are the objects of such choice but are rather mere epiphenomena, co-effects of common causes in the brain; (3) the threat from reductionist mechanism, that we and everything we value is nothing but a bunch of two-valued switches going off in our brains; and (4) the threat from fallibilism, that we are not masters in our own house because we lack the privileged knowledge of our own minds needed to be such masters. The book seeks to blunt such radical challenges while nonetheless detailing how law, morality, and common-sense psychology can harness the insights of an advancing neuroscience to more accurately assign moral blame and legal punishment to the truly deserving.

“The Teacher Who had the Greatest Influence on My Thinking”

2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 141-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rainer Reisenzein ◽  
Irina Mchitarjan
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Interpersonal Relations ◽  
Responsibility Attribution ◽  
Alexius Meinong ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Psychological Inquiry ◽  
Academic Teacher ◽  
Common Sense Psychology

According to Heider, some of his ideas about common-sense psychology presented in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations ( Heider, 1958 ) originally came from his academic teacher, Alexius Meinong. However, Heider makes no reference to Meinong in his book. To clarify Meinong’s influence on Heider, we compare Heider’s explication of common-sense psychology with Meinong’s writings, in particular those on ethics. Our results confirm that Heider’s common-sense psychology is informed by Meinong’s psychological analyses in several respects: Heider adopts aspects of Meinong’s theory of emotion, his theory of value, and his theory of responsibility attribution. In addition, Heider more or less continues Meinong’s method of psychological inquiry. Thus, even without Meinong’s name attached, many aspects of Meinong’s psychology found their way into today’s social psychology via Heider. Unknowingly, some of us have been Meinongians all along.

Acute Viral Meningitis

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Roos ◽  
Jared R. Brosch
Keyword(s):  
Cerebrospinal Fluid ◽  
Viral Meningitis ◽  
Viral Pathogen ◽  
Meningeal Irritation ◽  
Nuchal Rigidity ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Neurologic Sequelae ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Csf Pleocytosis ◽  
The Brain

Acute viral meningitis refers to inflammation of the meninges of the brain in response to a viral pathogen. Viruses cause meningitis, encephalitis, myelitis, or a combination of these, meningoencephalitis or encephalomyelitis. Viral meningitis is typically a self-limited disorder with no permanent neurologic sequelae. This chapter reviews the epidemiology, etiology, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, treatment, complications, and prognosis. Tables describe Wallgren’s criteria for aseptic meningitis, important arboviral infections found in North America, herpes family viruses and meningitis, classic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) abnormalities with viral meningitis, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for confirming arboviral meningitis, basic CSF studies for viral meningitis, and etiology of CSF pleocytosis. Figures depict common causes of viral meningitis, nuchal rigidity, examination for Kernig sign, and Brudzinski sign for meningeal irritation. This chapter contains 4 highly rendered figures, 7 tables, 16 references, and 5 MCQs.

Acute Viral Meningitis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen L. Roos ◽  
Jared R. Brosch
Keyword(s):  
Cerebrospinal Fluid ◽  
Viral Meningitis ◽  
Viral Pathogen ◽  
Meningeal Irritation ◽  
Nuchal Rigidity ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Neurologic Sequelae ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Csf Pleocytosis ◽  
The Brain

Acute viral meningitis refers to inflammation of the meninges of the brain in response to a viral pathogen. Viruses cause meningitis, encephalitis, myelitis, or a combination of these, meningoencephalitis or encephalomyelitis. Viral meningitis is typically a self-limited disorder with no permanent neurologic sequelae. This chapter reviews the epidemiology, etiology, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, treatment, complications, and prognosis. Tables describe Wallgren’s criteria for aseptic meningitis, important arboviral infections found in North America, herpes family viruses and meningitis, classic cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) abnormalities with viral meningitis, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for confirming arboviral meningitis, basic CSF studies for viral meningitis, and etiology of CSF pleocytosis. Figures depict common causes of viral meningitis, nuchal rigidity, examination for Kernig sign, and Brudzinski sign for meningeal irritation. This review contains 4 highly rendered figures, 8 tables, and 17 references.

Contemporary Neuroscience’s Epiphenomenal Challenge to Responsibility

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-215
Author(s):  
Michael S. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
The Other ◽  
Experimental Demonstration ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
The Brain

This paper examines a particular challenge to responsible agency thought to be mounted by contemporary neuroscience. The challenge stems from the alleged experimental demonstration that human choices, and the actions they putatively cause, are mere epiphenomena of one another, co-effects of common causes in the brain of the acting subject. Denied by this challenge is that choices cause the actions that are their objects, seemingly an indispensable requirement for there to be responsible agency. The force of this challenge is blunted by a showing that in certain cases we can control (and thus be responsible) for more than we cause—that (more specifically) we sometimes are in control of a harm that is one horn of an epiphenomenal fork by knowing of the fork’s existence and by being in control of the other horn of that fork, even while recognizing that of course there can be no causal relationship across the horns of such forks.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Michael S. Moore
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Academic Psychology ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Psychology

This introductory chapter lays out the dramatic challenge neuroscience is taken to issue to our sense of who and what we are and to our responsibility for our choices and for our actions. Neuroscience is seen as the newest of a series of challenges issued to the criminal law, retributivist punishment, moral blameworthiness, and the common-sense psychology all of these presuppose. Backed by a better science of the human brain, neuroscience reissues the challenges to responsibility that have long been issued by academic psychology, be that psychology introspectionist, Freudian, behaviorist, genetic, or whatever.

scholarly journals Hypertension-Related Cerebral Microbleeds

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-269
Author(s):  
Sujan T. Reddy ◽  
Sean I. Savitz
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽  
Cerebral Microbleeds ◽  
Chronic Hypertension ◽  
Amyloid Angiopathy ◽  
Resonance Imaging ◽  
Gradient Echo ◽  
Cerebellar Hemorrhage ◽  
Common Causes ◽  
Cerebral Amyloid ◽  
The Brain

Hypertension and cerebral amyloid angiopathy are the most common causes of cerebral microbleeds. The pattern of microbleeds on T2*-weighted gradient echo sequence of magnetic resonance imaging of the brain can be indicative of the etiology of intracerebral hemorrhage. We describe a case of cerebellar hemorrhage with cerebral microbleeds secondary to chronic hypertension.

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